


deep cover

by HighSidhe



Series: Random Snippets and Crossovers [22]
Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Future Skull/Arcobaleno, M/M, Vaguely shippy?, cop!Skull, rookie!Skull
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 21:36:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17988947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HighSidhe/pseuds/HighSidhe
Summary: The Rainbow Curse has been broken, and some secrets about Skull are revealed.





	deep cover

Confusion drained into dread as the other Arcobaleno didn’t react to his loud proclamation, not even Reborn, who could always be counted on to order him to shut up, at the very least. Instead they were all looking at him with varying degrees of grimness, except Colonello and Lal, who were studiously avoiding his gaze.

They weren’t looking at him like he was a fellow (albeit weaker) Arcobaleno. They were looking at him like he was a target. Like he was Skull the civilian who had stumbled on their hidden world by accident. He hadn’t realized that they had stopped seeing him as that until it was back full force.

Time to go.

He’d barely made it two steps before Fon was dragging him back onto the couch. “If you try to run again, I will sit on you.” The Storm told him serenely, his grip on Skull’s shoulder not budging.

Skull shot him an incredulous look. 

He was pretty sure they were about to murder him in some godawful way, and he was supposed to be worried about the older Arcobaleno _sitting on hi_?

“You’ve been keeping secrets from us, Skull.” Viper murmured, their gaze giving him the impression that he was a bug pinned to a board. 

“Skull-sama’s life is an open book!” He protested loudly. 

“Your acting is terrible.” They observed critically. “But it served its purpose, I suppose. It took me nearly four years after the curse to track you down, Alexei. I do love a challenge.” They didn’t _sound_ like they enjoyed a challenge, but Skull was too busy hyperventilating and trying to flee to really notice.

Fon’s grip tightened on his shoulder, keeping him in place. Skull swallowed, heart racing, as he tucked his trembling hands into his jacket. He’d survived a lot of shit throughout the decades, but somehow he doubted his flames would stand up to the concerted the combined efforts of six other flames, all of which were probably more powerful than his own.

It had been a long time since he’d truly been terrified of them, but he was remembering that feeling now.

“Enough, Skull, we’re not going to kill you.”

“Why?” he bit out. “I’m not- I’m not _like you_!”

Reborn arched an eyebrow. “Aren’t you? You’ve been working rather closely with the Carcassa, haven’t you? Sounds like you’re _one of us_ to me.”

“I had no choice!” He protested. “You were practically shoving me at famiglias!” And even before then, they’d been doing everything in their power to trap him. At least that way, he had some measure of freedom, and the family hadn’t been powerful enough to trap him the way that some of the others would have. 

“Of course we were.” Fon murmured in his ear. Skull twitched at the close proximity, trying to wriggle away. He didn’t get very far away before he was practically dragged into his lap. “You’re _ours_. We couldn’t risk you going back to _them_.”

“I- what?” Oh god, they _knew_. Visions of concrete shoes flashed behind his eyes. 

“We’ve know for _years_ lackey.” Reborn waved it off, somewhat impatiently. “We couldn’t kill you, and we couldn’t risk you returning to _Interpol_ with information about us. The obvious solution was to get you involved in the underworld.”

Skull stared at Reborn, at a loss of what to say, just trying to wrap his head around what they were telling him. “Why?” He croaked. Thirty years of feeling _trapped_ , with no control over his own damn life, and that was what they had wanted. But then, that was what they had always wanted, wasn’t it. “I didn’t _want_ to join your world! I had- I wanted to do _good_ , _catch_ people like you- not, not _kill people_.”

“You were ours the moment Checkerface found you.” Lal told him. “If anyone else had found out who you were, they would have killed you, Arcobaleno or not. We did that to protect you, just as much to protect ourselves.”

“I-” He glanced between all of them. 

They’d been manipulating his _life_ and he hadn’t even noticed. 

Lal had a point, of course. No one outside of the Arcobaleno would have thought twice about killing him if they had known who he had worked for before becoming an Arcobaleno. Hell, he was surprised the Arcobaleno hadn’t taken him out quietly once they’d known.

They’d been at the height of their careers when they’d been chosen; he’d barely even begun his, still only a rookie within the ranks of Interpol. Realistically speaking, he wouldn’t have stood a chance if they’d wanted him dead. It was exactly why the persona of Skull had been born. He was safer as a loud, annoying ‘civilian’ than an agent.

But then he’d been doomed before he’d ever really gone, hadn’t he. It hadn’t been officially sanctioned, strictly off the books. That alone should have caught his attention, and he had kicked himself so many times over the last three decades for not asking more questions when he’d been told of these mysterious child-assassins that were supposedly the best of their fields. But he’d been eager to prove himself, and had gotten in over his head without noticing until it was too late and he’d become _one of them_.

Without quite noticing, he’d buried his head in his hands. 

 

There had never been any chance of him escaping the underworld.He couldn’t exactly return to Interpol anyway; he’d vanished off the face of the earth even before he’d been cursed. 

He was trapped.

**Author's Note:**

> not beta'd
> 
> I just really want some secretly-a-cop!Skull fics, and since Interpol tackles organized crime among other things, it seemed a little more likely for Checkerface to find him there than if he were, say, a small-town cop.
> 
> As always, if you feel inspired to write something from this, drop me a link. I would love to read it!


End file.
